Specifications

Example 2 — A large office in Tokyo
The large office in Tokyo needs to download the 200 Kb per day for DAT files to its 4,000 nodes, using
the formula:
(200 Kb) x (4,000 nodes) = 800 MB of data randomly pulled per day to Tokyo
In the large office in Tokyo with 4,000 nodes uses 800 MB of bandwidth per day just to update the
DAT files alone. Since replication of the DAT file to Tokyo only uses 70 MB of bandwidth per day it is
much more efficient to have a repository in the Tokyo office so all DATs can be pulled across the LAN
instead of across the slower WAN link.
Example 3 — A large office in New York City
The large office in New York City needs to download a 23 MB patch update for VirusScan Enterprise to
its 1,000 nodes. Using the formula:
(23 MB) x (1,000 nodes) = 23 GB of data pulled to the New York City office
This 23 MB patch is significantly larger than the 200 Kb daily DAT files. You probably have a repository
in New York depending on the speed of the WAN link to New York and how quickly the patch needs to
be pushed out. You might find a balance if you carefully craft your client tasks to pull updates and
patches at a gradual pace instead of deploying the patch to all nodes in one day. See Deploying
products for detailed information.
Conclusions
Some ePolicy Orchestrator users put a repository at geographic sites that have only a few dozen
nodes. If your site does not have at least 200 to 300 nodes it cannot benefit from the bandwidth
saved using a repository. If there is no local repository, the agents will go to the next nearest
repository for their updates. This repository might be across a WAN link but it will still use less
bandwidth since you don’t have to replicate the entire repository across the WAN.
The exception to this rule is if you are deploying a larger software package. For example, the
VirusScan Enterprise client software is 23 MB. In this case it would be more efficient to place a
repository temporarily at a smaller site so the clients software can download the 23 MB file locally.
Then disable this repository once the client is rolled out.
Determine repository count
How many repositories you need depends on the hardware where the repository is installed. Most
repositories can serve out files to several thousand nodes. If you are using clients as SuperAgents,
they are more efficient if they are dedicated to your clients instead of sharing the SuperAgent client
hardware with other applications.
There is no hard technical limit to how many nodes a repository can handle, but with a properly
crafted update task for your clients, repositories can update a significant number of nodes.
The following table is an estimate of the updates a repository can handle and the hardware needed.
These specifications can be influenced by many factors, for example how you update content,
products, and patches.
Repositories
Determine repository count
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